Cheetahs, Tassie devils and lizards among Monarto park’s many breeding successes for Zoos South Australia

Zoos South Australia's Monarto Safari Park, near Murray bridge east of Adelaide, played its part in trying to preserve the endangered cheetah.
Image courtesy Zoos South Australia

Zoos South Australia and its Monarto Safari Park’s breeding programme keep producing highlights, such as the number of giraffes born there in the 40s, making it Australasia’s biggest breeder of giraffes.Australia’s biggest giraffe herd grew in 2018 with the arrival of 12-month-old Scarlett at Monarto from Africa.

In a conservation world first, Monarto Safari Park (formerly called a zoo), near Murray bridge east of Adelaide, successfully bred one of Australia’s rarest species, the pygmy blue-tongue lizard, in 2016. The birth of 14 lizards marked the first time the species had been bred in captivity. Zoos South Australia had been involved in the conservation of this species since its rediscovery in 1992. A purpose-built breeding area was built for it.

In 2017, the 40th and 41st giraffe calves were born at Monarto, making it the most successful giraffe breeder in Australasia.

Kesho, from a litter of cheetahs in 2012, gave birth to two litters. With two litters of cheetahs born to Kesho, herself a Monarto product, the zoo was making an important contribution saving the world's fastest animal and Africa's most endangered big cat with just 6,700 remaining in wild Africa.

Monarto’s natives-keeping team have been part of an Australia-wide effort to save Tasmanian devils from a cancer threat. From 2006, Monarto bred more than 40 Tasmanian devils to be released back into the wild in Tasmania. This breeding was  part of building up an insurance population against the threat of a cancerous facial tumour. Two of the Monarto devils were sent to Toledo Zoo in the United States of America in 2018.

Monarto also had its first meerkat pups, shortly after five were born at Adelaide Zoo.

Monarto also was involved in saving the critically endangered addax, the endangered Prsewalski's horse calf, a scimitar-horned oryx (extinct in the wild) and the western swamp tortoises that are critically endangered with less than 50 in the wild in the mid 1980s.

Adelaide Zoo in the city celebrated breeding successes for endangered species such as the orange-bellied parrots, brush-tailed rock wallaby and small primates including golden lion tamarins and white-cheeked gibbons.